A Philippines military spokesperson said today the three alleged terrorists arrested last week in General Santos, a city in the country's southern island of Mindanao, were wrongly identified as Malaysians. They are Indonesians.

Military spokesperson Col Nestor Ochoa for the region that covers General Santos said that the three Jaka Antari, Julkiri Letemba and Rahman Yanis were found "to be Indonesians and not Malaysians after all".

Ochoa said the error was made because the house owner where the three were arrested had described them as Malaysians.

"We brought them to the police station where we carried out tactical interrogations. They were not Malaysians," Ochoa told malaysiakini when contacted today.

Ochoa said that the three were also illegal immigrants in the country and were working as carpenters for a Filipino couple when they were arrested.

Nothing found

The military official said although nothing was found in the house where the three were staying, the arrests were carried out based on reports from the republic's bureau of immigration and deportation.

"Officials from the bureau of immigration and deportation from Manila came to General Santos because of reports that there were illegal Indonesians believed to be terrorists," he said.

Ochoa said another individual, a naturalised Indonesian Uskar Makawata, was also arrested with the trio. All four men have since been brought to Manila.

According to an AFP report today, the three foreign men were identified as "Malaysian nationals" in a military report on Philippine security forces' raids of several homes in General Santos last Saturday.

The Philippine military and police force had arrested the men during a search of several houses in the southern city and seized "subversive" documents from the house of Makawata and guns and bullets from another house.

AFP also reported Philippine authorities as saying that General Santos was suspected to be the base of a Jemaah Islamiah cell. The militant Southeast Asian Islamic group is believed to be linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.